Pieces
by Sossity
Summary: Unconnected short stories in the due South universe.  3: All things considered, Stella's...happy.
1. Chapter 1

So the wonderful Caerl was kind enough to point out in a review that it might be a good idea to collect all these little pieces together under one banner; since that sounded like a good idea (and since he's generally a smart guy and has played a lot more Dragon Age than I have and his character could probably kick my character's butt), I decided to give it a try. Hope you all enjoy!:)

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><p>"This. This right here? This is Canada." Ray bounced up and down on his heels, gleefully brandishing his find. Other nearby shoppers glanced over curiously.<p>

Fraser shook his head. "You've spent months watching the Northern Lights. You've nearly memorized the constellations. You've travelled hundreds of thousands of kilometers over the vast tundra."

"And that was absolutely amazing, Frase. I ain't saying it wasn't. This is one of those, you know, metaphor things."

"Oh?" Fraser raised his eyebrows and tried to suppress a smile. "Do tell."

"It's _milk._ Inna _bag_." He shook the bag at Fraser. It sloshed.

"So I see."

"No, you _don't_. See, what you have here is a plastic bag full of liquid."

"I believe we've established that, Ray."

"This makes no _sense!_ How do you pour it? How do you close it back up? Where do you stick it in the fridge so it doesn't all run out?"

"Well, Ray, I believe you snip off a corner and use a pitcher-"

"And how fast is _that_ gonna start tasting like the inside of the fridge? Huh? Or do you just leave the pitcher on the counter to spoil?"

Fraser opened his mouth several times in a series of unformed rebuttals. "And I suppose it makes more sense to you to keep milk in a cardboard carton?"

Ray's flailing hand landed gently on Fraser's arm. "That's what I'm _saying_! It totally doesn't! What if it leaks, or tips over? And I know the cardboard's waxed or something, but eventually the milk is _going _to soak through. Either way is completely insane, but you're so used to one and I'm so used to the other that they seem perfectly normal until someone points it out." He brandished the milk again. "This is the goddamned metric system, Fraser. This is curling. This is spelling stuff with a 'u' and saying 'aboot.' This is _Canada_!"

A woman by the egg display burst into spontaneous applause.

Ray threw the bag of milk into the basket and hustled Fraser off with a red face.

"But Ray, what about gallon jugs, or glass bottles? What do _they _indicate?" Fraser attempted to ask without giggling.

"...Oh, shut up. So what else do we need?"

"Actually, we're just about done." Fraser considered putting the milk back-after all, they had no need for perishables back at their hotel-but he didn't quite have the heart to separate Ray from his treasure. He looked at his watch. "It _is _getting close to lunchtime, however. Tell me, have you ever had poutine?"

"Nah, what's that?"


	2. Something in the Air

Spring comes a good month or two earlier in Chicago than it does in the Northwest Territories, and every year, it still manages to sneak up on Fraser. The buds on the hardwood trees distract him with their unexpected color; tiny red and white not-flowers that resolve eventually into perfect, miniature leaves. Songbirds return, and the sun warms up just enough for heavy clothes to become uncomfortable and get left at home.

Fraser finds himself...restless at this time of year. Paperwork cannot hold his interest, and he catches himself staring out the window like a schoolboy just before the bell. Ray is unfortunately subjected to his ever increasing impatience until the day he just can't bear his dress uniform a second longer than he has to, and shows up to a crime scene in his jeans and sweatshirt.

Ray never says a word, but when his shift is over that Friday he offers Fraser a ride back to the Consulate as usual, then kidnaps him-once a year, every year, and Fraser still never expects it-to drive an hour or two up the coast to where the houses thin out and there's room to breathe and a place to park. They walk up and down the shoreline in silence until Fraser's shoulders loosen up and then Ray veers off back into civilization and they stop at the same little ice cream stand that opens for the season before anything else does. Fraser can sit still finally; lean back into the picnic table and watch cream-colored cream drip down his fingers onto the pavement. Occasionally drops fall into the cuffs of his pants or onto his boots, but he doesn't move to wipe them off.

Ray always orders some complicated concoction that's half marshmallow, or nut, or some odd fruit, or occasionally all three with just enough ice cream to hold it together. Fraser gets frozen pudding. Fraser always teases Ray about his bizarre choices. Ray teases Fraser about always picking the same thing, and about how boring and tasteless "frozen pudding" sounds. Fraser tells him not to knock it until he's tried it. And so on and so on, all the way through the ice cream, back to the car, and back to Chicago, where Fraser gets the best night of sleep he's had in months and wakes up in a good mood.

Except this year, a few minutes into the usual bickering, Ray rolls his eyes, leans over, and licks a long stripe up the side of Fraser's cone.

Fraser is struck dumb.

Ray sits back up and flicks his tongue over his mouth, considering. Then he _beams _at Fraser, half laughing, half long-suffering, and tells him that he's going to make him try drinking rum if _that's_ his favorite flavor.

And Fraser is so completely _lost_ that he can only bite his lip and nod slowly.

And it's not until they're halfway back home that Fraser realizes what he's agreed to.


	3. Winter Lady

Stella sits in front of her fireplace, paperwork surrounding her in a circle and her bare feet nearly touching the hearth. She brushes her hair behind her ear and holds a deposition up to better catch the light. The cases are a lot different these days. Poor kids with nowhere to turn for help, mostly. A few bigger ones she'll actually get paid for. And that dam thing, but even she'd admit that she has no chance in hell of getting reparations for even one person, let alone for the masses of people displaced and for the environmental damage. It keeps her mind busy, even when she's not working on other cases, or learning some new aspect of tribal law.

She's still not sure what she was thinking. _If_ she was thinking. To run up here when her second marriage crashed and burned, back to her first Ray? Sheer romantic nonsense. As far as she knows, he and Fraser are perfectly happy wherever they're living now. Just as well that she came to her senses in Whitehorse and stopped there. She was embarrassed to have even gotten on the plane in the first place. But if she hadn't...

They needed her here. She needed to _be_ here.

She's wearing a sweater and long johns. Her old suits and dresses are boxed up in the corner of the bedroom closet, to be brought out in the few meetings or cases where she has to deal with someone from one of the big cities. People like that, she's learned over her life, are only impressed by the fashionable and the expensive and she has no time for that any more. People here respect you if you can take care of yourself, if you can hold your own against Nature at her strongest, and that's all she needs.

She saw Fraser in court, once, a couple of years ago. He was in town on police business. He had no idea she was here. Obviously. She didn't avoid him, this was her home as well now, she just nodded and presented her case as best as she could.

They went out for lunch at recess. He had laugh lines around his eyes now and his hair was turning gray at the edges. She had no doubt these were both Ray's fault.

She was surprised to find a decent person hidden somewhere under the starch, someone who cared deeply for the land and the people he took care of. She hoped, in a way, that he could see the same in her. She could tell, though, from the wariness he presented, that she would always be foremost his husband's ex-wife.

She left them alone. She never tried to contact Ray; not during that first stupid trip where she bawled her eyes out in the airport bathroom and bought that one newspaper with that discrimination suit splattered all over the headlines, not back in Florida when she read every book and court case she could find on the Inuit people and wished she'd paid better attention to the expert when he was around, and not even much later, when she could have used about twelve extra hands helping her fight her way through immigration. Not even when she heard from Ray's mother about the engagement and, later, the marriage.

No, even after that lunch, she let the past be.

It was a completely unexpected pleasure, then, to receive a card from them that Christmas.

She stands up, legs stiff and aching, and pads into the kitchen for more coffee. She'll be glad to see the sun again. Her first winter was her hardest. But even after all these years, she still finds herself getting maudlin, occasionally; wondering where she would have ended up if things had been different, if either of her marriages worked out. Not that she would trade this for the world, of course, and she'll greet it, as she always does, at the kitchen window with a mug of coffee, a grin, and a wild cheer.


End file.
